Dividing the earth into climates

This lesson asks you to classify the climate of your local region with tools or systems, and to compare it with other regions of Ontario, Canada and the world. The museum offers one old system, the seven climates of the astronomers, as al-Masudi reports it; it holds no record on Ontario's ecoregions or on today's climate classification, so the classification of your own region is for your class. ¹

Look at the expectation: it says tools or systems, in the plural. Ask what the old system sorts the earth by, and what a modern system sorts it by.

Read one report closely. The seven climates reach the museum through al-Masudi, who notes that, according to the astronomers, each quarter of the earth, northern and southern, contains seven climates. Inhabited land extends twenty-four degrees beyond the equator, and the rest is covered by the great sea ². The southern quarter is empty of people, ruined by intense heat. Habitation is impossible in places where the heat is excessive or the sun is too far, and there cold and ice prevail. The best inhabited land is the one on which the rays of the sun fall clear, which is the fourth climate; for this group it is Iraq ^{2 3}. The division is reported as the astronomers', and the record does not present it as al-Masudi's own.

The records give no statement by al-Masudi of why he reported this division. They show that he gathered in his books the reports of nations and cities, of creeds and sects ⁴. For al-Muqaddasi there is a stated purpose. He says he found that scholars had covered the sciences before him, so he chose "a science they had neglected": the regions of Islam with their cities, roads and trades and the differences between their peoples ^{5 6}. His highest foundation is what he saw himself; then he questioned sensible people about places he could not reach, keeping what they agreed on ⁷. The records report no preface of religious purpose for either man.

The two systems sort the earth by different things. On the astronomers' division, as al-Masudi reports it, the sort is by the fall of the sun's rays and degrees from the equator ². Al-Muqaddasi departed from it, making the climates of Islam fourteen and beginning each with its chief city, where the ruler resided and where the administrative offices were gathered ⁸. He also criticizes a predecessor, al-Jayhani, a man of philosophy and astronomy, who wrote of stars, geometry, the idols of India and unknown halting places without detailing districts or ordering provinces ^{7 9}. The records state both and decide neither.

Al-Masudi's passage is a report of what the astronomers hold, not a first-hand account ², and the record on him says that his own book is not enough to document the year of his death ⁴. Al-Muqaddasi's account of his own method is his own claim: he says that what was sound for him by eyewitness or widespread report he stated outright, while what he doubted or had from single reports he attributed to the person he heard it from ¹⁰. The museum read De Goeje's 1877 Leiden edition, whose apparatus gives the variants of the Berlin and Constantinople manuscripts; the pages cited are scan pages ^{11 5}.

Al-Muqaddasi criticizes al-Jayhani for writing of stars and geometry without detailing districts, while the astronomers' division counts degrees from the equator and the fall of the sun's rays. A reader may object that a division by chief cities is not a division of the earth at all. Take a position: for which purposes is each system more useful, and why does your choice survive the objection?

• The seven climates: the astronomers' division and al-Muqaddasi's fourteen.
• Ahsan al-Taqasim: al-Muqaddasi's geography, his preface and his criticism of predecessors.
• al-Muqaddasi: the geographer and his account of his own journeys.
• al-Masudi: the historian and traveller who reports the astronomers' division.

Read the record of The seven climates. Write down in one line what the climates are counted from, and in another line what your class uses to classify your own region.